Former baseball star Sasaki Kazuhiro (37) and his second wife, talento Enamoto Kanako (25), made their first public appearance together on Thursday. The former Yokohama Bay Stars and Seattle Mariners star pitcher caused quite a media storm last year when he was thought to have dumped his wife, former talento Shimizu Kaori, and the mother of his two kids for Enamoto, considered a “high maintenance” type. But Sasaki has custody of the kids and they all attended the Tokyo preview of “The Chronicles of Narnia” together, looking every bit the happy family. Sasaki, known to fans as “Daimajin” and who now works as a baseball analyst for TBS, admitted that appearing together in public made him uncomfortable, but added that if they didn’t do so occasionally, the weekly tabloids would start writing divorce rumors again. On a recent TV appearance with fortune-teller Hosoki Kazuko, Sasaki described how basically his former wife had been the one to walk out, leaving him to – as he put it in typical Japanese style – “make their lunchboxes every morning.”
• The latest issue of the weekly magazine Friday reports that rotund comedian Yamamoto Keiichi (37) and model/talento Osawa Akane (20) are romantically involved. Yamamoto is one half of popular comedy duo Gokuraku Tombo, while Ohsawa is the grand-daughter of Ohsawa Keiji, manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters baseball team. The unlikely romance is said to have started last October. Her agency describe Yamamoto as “just a friend, like a big brother.”